World Wide Web (www or W³): (between 1992 and 2042) Technological economic subsystem designed to monetize the intelligence of a few to produce ignorance in many more others. Internet is a fertile space for baseless or futile controversies (see "nihilistic relativism"), bad faith arguments (see "trolls") and personal attacks (see "DOTA 2"); it's been shown to warm up populations to authoritarianism and speech control (see "Xiism"), and to generate the cannibalistic stock-splosions of the early 21st century. It was eventually replaced in 2042 by radioweb, a quantum mesh network which ultimately spanned forty-eight thousand stars centered on the Sun by the year 4000. The only remnant of the World Wide Web in use today is Javascript. Replicas of the W³ circa 2020 are commonly used in airgap VR settings, to train soldiers to resist torture, or as horror depiction in movies. Psycho-history estimates that the human race would have gone extinct by 2145 at the latest if the W³ "experiment" hadn't been shut down prematurely by the Pixies.

The worst kind of satire is the kind that is dead wrong in its' own motivation.

The internet did spread ideas. The spread of ideas can bring certain philosophical freedoms. 'Democracy' is too loosely defined in this context.

The entire attitude is really offensive to me only due to the sheer fact that I am amazed at the accomplishments we've made as humans in the short time that I've been around -- and the internet is one of those huge accomplishments that leaves me in awe every time I stop to think about it.

Previous history was widely categorized and considered by the data storage methods thought of during that time, and the dissertation of that information over the world -- the internet blows all previous methods out of the water by many orders of magnitude, while simultaneously lowering the barrier of entry to these stores of information down low enough to where even the most destitute human can usually find a method to participate.

Did the printing press have as many detractors? Have humans always expected the tools to do the entire job, rather than facilitating it?

'Can someone call up The-Internet and mention that they're late to a 3 o'clock democracy spreadin' gig?'

I joke, 'the internet' is a tool, a network -- not an entity. To anthropomorphize the tool into a lazy being that hasn't solved the promised problems would be silly.

but, you're right, humans have done a lousy job using tools, like the internet, to create equality; thankfully we seem to have a long enough future ahead of us to remediate such laziness on our own part.

I still think it will, but its also created opportunity for other innovators less devoted to liberalism.

In my area, every spring as the days get longer and the frost subsides my yard springs up weeds. Within a month the turf crowds it out despite its slow start. Every year the same thing - the weeds are just quicker on the draw than the grass.

I think we're in the spring dawning of massive global connectivity - the nodes are online but they aren't good at resisting infection, the networks are vast but not resilient to abuse, truth struggles against the speed and virality and appeal of propaganda - but humanity's good at inventing approaches and institutions to improve on those things.

Asteroids, pandemics, and climate change on the other hand....

The internet used to be difficult to get to, we were playing with a loaded deck.

It did, didn't it? Facebook and Twiter took credit for creating a few democracies in the middle east during the Arab Spring.